Software Asset Management is the whole lot of people, procedures and technology necessary to get insights, overview and control of software as an asset. By doing so, as a business you are able to lower your legal, organizational and financials risks. Traditionally, with Software Asset Management you will be looking at the gap between usage and entitlement. At the same time being afraid the software publisher finds out about your gap and sending you a huge bill.
Modern times
The world has changed. In these times of Digital Transformation you as a business want to move forward. You want to enable a mobile workforce, start with smart customer services, get data analytics or just want to move your IT to the cloud. You do not want to worry about IT, hardware, software and management. By using modern technology to empower your business you still do need insights, overview and control. Not for the legal or financial part, but to clearly understand how your employees are using the technology you provide today. And to make sure that when you introduce new technology tomorrow, your people will use it to be more productive and achieve more. In line with your company goals. So Software Asset Management still matters because of the proper insights it will provide (especially for cloud subscriptions, not really an asset, but still …).
Fast forward
But what I’ve described above isn’t enough. You will need to bring your company into fast forward to be able to survive the future. But how? In what way can you make use of what technology to do so? You never thought that SAM is able to help there, right? Well, it is. Because of SAM you get the actual numbers, the actual data. With this data and your need for business solutions you are able to have a proper conversation about new technology. Let’s just stop talking about the gap, but let’s start talking about what could be possible for your organization.
Let me give you just a simple example. Just by knowing how many SQL Servers you are using for what cause and by how many people will give you the insights into the need for data storage and data usage for applications and business processes. By knowing this, you can take a look at possibilities for Azure SQL Services for cutting costs. Take a look at PowerBI for data analysis and clever data dashboards. Take a look at Azure Machine Learning to use data as the input for artificial intelligence. And you don’t want to do this because the technology is there or somebody is telling you to go there. You should want to do this – again for the example – to make your project management organization more customer centric and, who knows, even built your own service chatbot. In the end, you want to embrace new technology to empower your business and achieve more. And you know what? Software Asset Management will make this possible ….
Start today
Are you thinking about improving your business? Do you feel the need that you have to innovate to be ahead of the competition? Then you should think about implementing Software Asset Management yesterday. Let’s start the conversation, reach out to me today.
Peter van Uden
peter @ quexcel.com